In order to expedite the packing of individually bagged food products, such as potato chips, into shipping cartons, it is desirable to have the bagged food products in a vertically oriented array. The vertical orienting of bagged food products, known in the art as collating, allows for efficient transition of the bagged food product into shipping cartons.
Formerly, the process of gathering the bagged food products from conveyors and transferring them into shipping cartons was a tedious and time consuming task. The bagged food products were randomly spaced and horizontally positioned on the conveyor making it difficult to transfer the individually bagged food products from the conveyor into the shipping cartons.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,356,906 issued Nov. 2, 1982, to David M. Fallas, discloses a device that eliminates the difficult task of manually gathering and arranging the food product bags on the conveyor for transfer into the shipping cartons. However, the prior device was expensive and complicated. In contrast, the present invention achieves the same result in a less expensive and more efficient manner.
The present invention includes a first inclined portion of a conveyor system for elevating the food product bags and dropping them onto a second horizontal portion of the conveyor system. The first inclined portion of the conveyor system has a horizontal rubber coated bar for engaging the bagged food products and causing them to tip forwardly as they fall from the first inclined portion of the conveyor system onto the second horizontal portion of the conveyor system resulting in a properly collated array of bagged food packages for transfer into shipping cartons.